Protesters in Mill Valley support dismissed Tam math teachers

More than 100 protesters gathered in front of Tamalpais High School before Friday's first school bell, condemning the school district's recent decision to let go three math teachers.

Holding signs with phrases such as "save our teachers," "honk for school board transparency" and "addition by subtraction is bad math," the crowd attracted honks from drivers passing through the busy intersection at Miller Avenue and Camino Alto.

Beginning with about 20 protesters — many of them parents — at 7:30 a.m., the crowd steadily grew, as students arriving for school joined the demonstration.

At Wednesday's district meeting, the board of trustees approved an administrative recommendation to release the teachers, making the announcement to a crowd that had largely gathered to plead with the district to keep them.

The teachers — Ryan Fedoroff, Anders Fairbanks and Juan Vidal — were all informed Feb. 28 they were not being brought back to Tamalpais High School next school year. Vidal is a first-year teacher. Fedoroff and Fairbanks are both in their second full years at Tam High.

"I wouldn't have passed math without Mrs. Fedoroff," sophomore Tizjohn Armstead said at the protest. "I usually hate math. Now I appreciate what's going on."

The crowd included parents of students who had Fedoroff and Fairbanks, as well as parents whose children never had any of the teachers in question. That includes Linda Lam, whose daughter is a senior at Tam High.

"To see how all these people, all the students get behind these teachers, makes me realize there's something going on here," Lam said. "That's what got me out of bed this morning."

Not everyone in the Tam High community agrees with the protesters. Several parents have said, confidentially, that the math department has struggled — and continues struggling — to adequately educate students.

Tam High senior Kate Plessas, who walked by the Friday protest, said that people are having an "emotional response" to a carefully thought-out decision.

Plessas said she has worked with Tam High Principal Julie Synyard, and believes Synyard is trying to do what is best for the school long term.

"I had Fedoroff, and she's amazing, but I stand by my administration," Plessas said. "If (Synyard) thought these teachers weren't Tam High material, she must have had a reason."

Fueling the outcry is the absence of an explanation for the dismissals, which administrators can not legally share with the public, due to a law that prohibits disclosure of school-related personnel matters.

During Wednesday's board meeting, little was revealed about the trustees' vote — which was conducted during a closed session — on the staff recommendation to refrain from renewing the contracts of the three math teachers.

When asked Friday by the Independent Journal for a breakdown of the trustees' vote on the matter, Superintendent Laurie Kimbrel said she wanted to consult with the school district's lawyer about what information to disclose. Under California's Ralph M. Brown Act requires such disclosure: "The legislative body of any local agency shall publicly report any action taken in closed session and the vote or abstention on that action of every member present."

Kimbrel said that while she can't speak to the specific decisions made on the teachers, each teacher who is in a probationary phase — the first two years a teacher is in the district — is evaluated in various manners to determine whether they will be brought back for a third year and receive "permanent" status, which is similar to a college professor receiving tenure.

"Site administrators work as a team to evaluate teachers," Kimbrel said. "There is a process laid out in our collective bargaining agreement."

That process includes classroom evaluations, which take into consideration classroom engagement of the students, a teacher's participation in the two-year New Teacher Program and in school meetings, and a teacher's openness to feedback from peers and superiors.

As she stated in an email to Tam High parents earlier in the week, Kimbrel reiterated Friday that the decision to let the teachers walk after this year is unrelated to New Tech Network teaching methods that recently have been introduced to the district as "another trick in the bag" for teachers.

Speculation has been swirling through the Tam High community that the teachers are not being asked back because of their refusal to take part in New Tech training. Kimbrel said that 29 of Tam High's 38 teachers in the probationary period did not take part in New Tech training, and many of them are being retained.